Jim Hollands – publisher of “Hastings Town”

Jim Hollands has been publishing “Hastings Town” for over six years. He has also been publishing “Rye’s Own” for 30 years and has just launched “Hythe & Romney Life”. All are monthly magazines with an emphasis on nostalgia and items of historical interest. Most of the articles and photographs in the monthly A4 magazines are written and illustrated by Jim. He also sells the advertising and distributes copies of the publication to newsagents in the relevant areas.

Watch Jim Hollands in this short video:

TRANSCRIPT

Bohemia Village Voice OK, we have here Mr Jim Hollands, who publishes a magazine called “Hastings Town” and he’s going to tell us a little bit about the history of it, and what it’s all about. Over to you.

Jim Hollands“Hastings Town” we started about 6 years ago, but previous to that we did “Rye’s Own” (which we still do), which we started in 1965, so that’s been going quite a long time. And subsequent to the Hastings magazine, which has been very successful, we’ve done another one for the Hythe & Romney Marsh area which we call “Hythe & Romney Life”. So we’ve got “Hastings Town”, “Rye’s Own” and “Hythe & Romney Life”.

Now we cover all the local events, but we really specialise in nostalgia, lots of memories, letters pages, all the bits and pieces of a normal magazine. The main thing is it’s not a free sheet. It’s sold in the old traditional way in newsagents – so you buy it. It’s not packed with advertising (there are adverts in it, but on a very small scale) and it’s been very successful.

People do like it. They like it so much they save it in sets. They save it annually and they have them bound up. I know one chap who’s got every copy we did from the very start – all the issues, all three magazines. So, yes, it’s been quite good.

Bohemia Village Voice That’s marvellous – where can people buy the magazine in Hastings?

Jim Hollands Any local newsagent we’ll say. You won’t find it in supermarkets in Hastings, because the whole premis of the magazine has been to support small business. So we’ve done that all the way along. So any proper traditional newsagent will have it on its shelf.

Bohemia Village VoiceExcellent – can we see a copy of it? Can we hold it up?

Jim Hollands This is the current copy. [holds up copy of magazine] It comes out on the last Saturday of the month.